Monday, October 11, 2010

October Horror Gauntlet Film #6

October Horror Gauntlet Film #6Cold Prey (2006)Directed by Roar Uthaug

Honestly I hadn't heard very much about Cold Prey before I decided to fire it up on the ol' Netflix Stream. I knew it was a Norwegian slasher, and that it took place in the mountains, but that was it. I had pretty high hopes for it, being a slasher from Norway and really thought that it might offer us something new in the genre. Unfortunately, my expectations were not to be fulfilled because what we are left with is pretty much the same movie you've seen fifty times before.Cold Prey starts out with a group of five young adults on their way to a mountain on a snowboarding adventure. One of the guys ends up breaking his leg, and they take shelter in an abandoned ski lodge for the night. Uh-oh, turns out someone else lives there, too, and he doesn't like visitors. If you want to know the rest of the story; think of every cliche in the book and apply them to a ski lodge in Norway and you've got Cold Prey!

I'm not suggesting that it's necessarily a bad thing to stick to classic tropes, but I expected some variation from the same old stuff we see in American cinema all the time. Maybe up the ante, you know. Instead, we've got a very trite story, some decent scares, and some lackluster kills. I can say that I had fun watching Cold Prey with a buddy. We actually ended up providing our commentary through much of the picture, MS3TK-style. But, in all seriousness, the film is fairly effective at times and can be a pretty good time if you are looking to shut off and enjoy a dumb movie. For that reason alone, I will at least have to give it a five on the enjoyment scale.